DIY Exercise: Use your favorite graphics program to design a USPS-style Forever stamp depicting President Trump. Whether you save the file is optional.
Last week the USPS issued a Jimmy Carter stamp on what would have been the former president’s 101st birthday. From his funeral service in January 2025 to the first day of issue, it’s the shortest elapsed time ever for any person to be honored on a U.S. stamp. Let’s hope President Trump doesn’t try to beat Carter’s record, through executive order or otherwise, by putting himself on a stamp before he leaves office.
The USPS has long had a policy that prohibits honoring living people on U.S. stamps. Currently the waiting period is three years, although it has been longer in the past. Exceptions are made for presidents (like Carter), and there have been a few times when stamps were issued slightly less than three years after a person’s death. But no living person has ever been honored on a stamp.
Would President Trump (or his supporters) try to circumvent USPS policy? Consider this: Trump has already been nominated to appear on a Forever stamp. That was in a formal proposal in April to the USPS’s Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee (CSAC) by former Trump presidential campaign advisor Richard H. Davis. The USPS receives thousands of such suggestions each year and reviews them in accordance with criteria established by CSAC. That should be enough to keep a Trump stamp from making the cut, but when you consider other changes to long-established rules and traditions the president has made or proposed, maybe it isn’t.
Consider also that the Treasury Department is working on a $1 commemorative coin featuring President Trump and plans to mint it next year during our country’s 250th birthday celebration. Other than Trump being president for the big celebration, I don’t get the connection. Hopefully an 1866 law enshrining the tradition that only deceased people can appear on U.S. currency will keep this from happening. If it doesn’t and assuming the coins are legal tender, perhaps we can use them to buy Trump cryptocurrency.
So why not change the policy and honor people while they are still alive? Our various sports halls of fame do this. So do local and state governments when they name streets, parks, and buildings for deserving citizens.
Even so, I’m not ready to include stamps (or coins) in this thinking. Stamps commemorate our history, culture, democracy, important organizations, events, heroes, and beloved figures. They portray national things we all share. The difference is that stamps honor legacy not current celebrity. That’s a small distinction, but it’s enough for me.
Meanwhile I wish President Trump a successful second term and a long life. Like our other presidents his time will come to be on a stamp. It’s just not now and probably not soon. We have forever.
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